Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Smoke and Mirrors

We can now see the outlines of the dish we will be served for the next 14 months of the Great Distraction known as presidential elections: Obama will be accused, by the people he did everything to please, of doing everything he should have done but didn’t.

Take the accusation from the neo-Marlboro Man, Rick Perry, that Obama is guilty of ‘appeasement’ and hostility to Israel. (The ‘appeasement’ line is a direct reference to Britain’s disastrous handling of Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War 2—always a popular meme with Zionist absolutists.) The criticism is bizarre given Obama and Hillary C’s acquiescence to continued settlement building and three years of enabling of Israeli intransigence and refusal to offer anything on Palestine. But Obama dared to suggest the 1967 borders as the basis for a permanent settlement, and he’s now cast as Neville Chamberlain handing over Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.

Meanwhile on the domestic front, Obama has rolled out his election-year populism by calling for a ‘millionaires tax’, which has zero chance of becoming law but may sound plausible to some of his Democratic base. That makes him guilty of ‘class war’ to Madame Bachmann and the party of the rich when in fact he has done a far better job than they could have dreamed of protecting the fabulously, obscenely and criminally wealthy financial sector.

All of which augurs a huge national yawn as we prepare for a full year of even more deeply debased political non-debate. But what else could we expect of embarrassing television spectacles like the CNN ‘Dancing with the Pols’ show last week purporting to be a serious discussion of our future? Why don’t we just ask Alec Tribec to stand the candidates behind the little Jeopardy boxes with smiley-face name tags (‘Newt!’, ‘Ron!’, ‘Mitch!’) and award the presidency to whomever can provide the best question for the answer, ‘Mental state characterized by lack of empathy and an inflated sense of self-importance’?